Reference Smart Routing raises the bar for how employment references are completed, helping you and your candidates reach higher completion rates with fewer delays.

This release introduces a new approach to reference delivery. Instead of relying on a single contact and waiting to see if it responds, Smart Routing builds resilience into the process from the start. When we’re highly confident it will help, we automatically send reference requests to both the candidate’s chosen referee and a trusted departmental or general inbox at the same time - creating two strong paths to completion without adding any extra steps.

What you need to know

• Smart Routing is on by default for all supported Regulatory, HR and Professional reference types
• No setup or action is required from recruiters or candidates.
• We only ever contact appropriate generic or departmental inboxes (for example, admin@zincwork.com or HR@zincwork.com) - never individual email addresses. It operates fully within Zinc’s existing consent framework.

What’s new

• A smarter way to route references: When a candidate enters their referee, we check whether the employer also has a trusted departmental or general inbox within our smart routing database. If our data shows that inbox is likely to help, we send a request there at the same time as the candidate’s chosen contact.
• Trusted inboxes, chosen carefully: We don’t rely on static lists. Trusted inboxes are identified using historical reference data, including recency, frequency, completion rates, and information quality. Individual email addresses and location-specific inboxes are intentionally excluded.
• Parallel requests, faster outcomes: Both requests run in parallel. As soon as any referee completes the reference, the check is marked complete and any remaining requests quietly close in the background.
• No added candidate friction: Candidates follow the same familiar flow, we'll let them know when we are also contacting an additional reference on their behalf
• Clear visibility for recruiters: Recruiters can see both requests clearly labelled in their workflow, with completed references reflected in reports.

On the report, you may see items that we have not collected marked as 'No longer needed'. These are shown for transparency on our efforts and to ensure your records are complete. We will continue to automatically chase these items, however our Customer Success team won’t be able to manually chase them on request.

Curious how Smart Routing works in practice, the FAQs cover the details.

Rechecks are by far the biggest gap in background checking. Rechecks conducted every three years, leave a major safeguarding blind spot. In light of recent safeguarding issues, Zinc is on a mission to increase rechecks in order to reduce the risk of safeguarding issues. We're on a mission to raise the bar for the whole industry.

Our research has shown the DBS Update Service is the only practical route to more frequent rechecks: anything else creates too much admin, too much candidate friction, and too much cost.

Today, we’re removing those barriers by making Update Service rechecks genuinely free. The DBS has approved of us dropping the previous requirement to run ID and address checks alongside rechecks. Once a candidate is identified as being on the Update Service, Zinc will automatically schedule and run rechecks every three months. Zero actions are required from you or the candidate.

No clicks. No chasing. No fees. Zinc covers the cost and the operational work, you simply get quarterly rechecks, done automatically. Find out more here or reply to this email with any questions. This feature is set to go live on Wednesday 21st of January.

Whilst December is often associated with end of year parties and cozy evenings at home, the Zinc team were hard at work improving our product so that we can continue to deliver the easy, instant and delightful Zinc experience that you expect.

Here is a quick summary of the improvements we made to our product in December.

In-app and email feature communications

We’re now sharing all product updates in one place — through our new in-app What’s new section, changelog page and by email for any high-impact changes.

Whats new

• Only hear about what matters to you. We look at the checks you run and the integrations you use, so we don’t fill your inbox with updates that aren’t relevant.
• Fine-tune your preferences anytime. You can update what you’d like to hear about in your account settings.

Other improvements we made in December

• UK visa expiry dates are now listed on the Schedule page, so you can easily track upcoming expiries and rerun checks all in one place. Click here for more info.
• Australian criminal check submissions are now much simpler for candidates, thanks to our improved points calculation interface. 
• You can now view the email used to send checks to a candidate directly from their individual progress and report pages. This makes it easier to check they’ve received their checks or quickly find the email you need.
• Individual check turnaround times are now available in the Checks sub-tab of the Analytics section within Insights.
• Your All Checks report now includes the dates candidates start and complete their checks. You’ll find this in Insights → Reporting.
• If a referee’s email address bounces, Zinc will help keep things moving by suggesting an alternative email address from the same company, where available.
• We’ve updated our Greenhouse integration and Partner API to support Word (.doc/.docx) CVs for CV checks, bringing them in line with Workday. Recruiters can now submit Word files without background check requests failing, with the same smooth experience across all integrations.

You’re seeing this because we’re now sharing all product updates in one place — through our new in-app What’s new section, changelog page and by email for any high-impact changes.

Whats new

• Only hear about what matters to you. We look at the checks you run and the integrations you use, so we don’t fill your inbox with updates that aren’t relevant.
• Fine-tune your preferences anytime. You can update what you’d like to hear about in your account settings.
• You’re already opted in. If you haven’t previously unsubscribed from Zinc product emails, you’re already on this mailing list — so you can expect to hear about new updates very soon.

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